


i got peace and i got pain (either way, it's all the same)

by bellawritess



Series: spiderman AU [3]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blood and Injury, Comfort/Angst, Friendship, Gen, HAPPY ENDING THOUGH DON'T WORRY EVERYONE IS FINE, Hurt/Comfort, Prequel, and maggie reminded me of it today and, i guess??, i made quick edits and said fuck it!, ill put clearer tws in the notes, ive just been sitting on this for too long, just in case, luke's 15 in this and michael is 16, there's nothing VERY graphic in here but i didn't want to say NONE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27057802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellawritess/pseuds/bellawritess
Summary: The familiar red of the Spiderman mask peers through. Michael pries the window open, a question on his tongue —aren’t you patrolling?— when Luke all but falls into Michael’s room, and catches himself just with his palm against the floor. With the other hand he reaches up, yanking off the mask, and Michael sees red, still, and — it’s not the mask, it’s blood. Luke is bleeding.Fuck. Luke is bleeding alot.
Relationships: Michael Clifford & Luke Hemmings
Series: spiderman AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859125
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41





	i got peace and i got pain (either way, it's all the same)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [expectopatronuz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/expectopatronuz/gifts).



> so there's a line in the malum spidey fic that says: "Luke’s a fucking dumbass if he thinks Michael’s going to let him patrol with no backup. They’ve both seen how poorly that can go." and i put that in as a throwaway line and then maggie commented on it saying THERE'S A STORY HERE AND I NEED IT. i had not realized that there was a story there, but it turns out there is, and this is it. so maggie this one's for you, surprise surprise
> 
> some TWs: there is semi-graphic description of violence in this, as well as depiction of injuries (cuts and bruises). i mean, the fic centers on a deeply injured person, being injured, so if that's a trigger, this is not the fic for you.
> 
> anyway, this fic is a prequel to the other installments - those ones happen during junior year, i think (i must have aged ashton down? nobody knows so that's what i'm going with) and this takes place sophomore year, tenth grade. so luke's fifteen and michael's sixteen and i highly recommend reading the other fics in this series before reading this, just for some, you know, context.
> 
> also, lastly, i would just BEG you to please cut me some slack regarding injuries and how to treat them. i have unfortunately never been in a fight before and a lot of this is conjecture so just suspend disbelief when you must! that's really become a motto here hasn't it WELL i always request that you suspend disbelief just a little more this time than usual
> 
> title is from need me by simple creatures <3 and with that: a look into how poorly it can go :))) enjoy
> 
> ETA: oh my FUCKIGN GOD i completely fucking forgot to give a massive thank you to [peyton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woahsos) for reading this and giving me very very helpful constructive criticism. peyton i am so sorry please forgive me i love you and i am indebted to you for making this fic better

Michael’s first mistake is trusting that Luke will be fine without backup. And _Luke’s_ first mistake is believing that himself. 

(Luke’s real first mistake is deciding that having superpowers means he has a debt to repay to Queens, his own health and safety notwithstanding. And frankly, depending how far back you go, Michael’s real first mistake is befriending Luke, but it’s not like either of them want to change either of those things.)

But Michael blames the stress of all this English work that’s built up. English isn’t his forte, and now he’s got an essay due tomorrow about _The Great Gatsby,_ which he’s barely even started reading, much less analyzing, and the pressure is so intense that when Luke asks if Michael will be on comms when Luke patrols tonight, Michael just swallows and hedges, “I have a _lot_ of homework.”

“Okay,” Luke says, munching carelessly on one of Michael’s fries. “That’s cool. Just wanted to check.”

“If you need me, I’ll —” 

“No, Mike, it’s fine. Do your work. I’ll be fine, it’s just a standard patrol anyway. And I can handle myself.”

Michael sighs in relief. He hates to leave Luke by himself, and it’s Michael’s fault anyway for getting too caught up with trying to finish the main quest of _Breath of the Wild_ this past week, but the fact of the matter is he has about twenty-four hours to read an entire book and then write an essay about it, and having to be on comms with Luke, sporadic chatter and witty commentary interrupting Michael’s concentration, will not be conducive to doing that.

“Stop eating my fries,” he says instead, reaching for one of Luke’s fries. “You’re a menace.”

Luke gives him a cheeky grin and takes another off Michael’s tray.

* * *

It’s barely past eleven at night when there’s an irregular tap against Michael’s window. That happens sometimes — idiotic birds, usually, _when_ are they going to learn that Queens is no place for wildlife — so Michael ignores it. He’s pretty sure he’s been reading the same paragraph for the last ten minutes, and his eyes have glazed over, but every time he reaches the end he thinks _fuck, I need to actually process this_ and jumps back to the top. 

The tap comes again, followed by the sound of somebody smacking their hand against the window. Michael frowns, swings his legs off his bed, and heads over.

The familiar red of the Spiderman mask peers through. Michael pries the window open, a question on his tongue — _aren’t you patrolling?_ — when Luke all but falls into Michael’s room, and catches himself just with his palm against the floor. With the other hand he reaches up, yanking off the mask, and Michael sees red, still, and — it’s not the mask, it’s blood. Luke is bleeding.

Fuck. Luke is bleeding a _lot._

“Holy fuck,” Michael says, stricken, and kneels where Luke is, still on his hands and knees, gasping for air. “Where — what — what happened? No, don’t answer that. Tell me — tell me where you’re hurt.” _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

Luke just makes a deeply anguished noise, one that sharpens itself into a dagger and digs its way through to Michael’s heart. Fuck. _Fuck._

“Luke, I need you to tell me where you’re hurt,” Michael says, torn between forcing Luke into a sitting position and not wanting to touch him in case he’s more injured than Michael can see. Luke solves the problem for him, twisting around and slumping back against Michael’s bedpost, legs splayed awkwardly out. Immediately, he doubles over, wrapping both arms around his middle, fingers curled into fists. His face looks so bad. Parallel to the line of his jaw on the left there’s a deep, bloody gash — Michael’s no expert, but at a guess, that’s from a knife, or something similarly sharp. Michael’s heart is pounding, or maybe it’s stopped. This is his best fucking friend, and — fuck. 

“Everywhere,” Luke moans, and screws his face up, poorly stifling a whine of distress.

“Okay, take the suit off,” Michael commands, swallowing the tremor in his voice. This has never happened before. Luke’s been hurt, but he’s always been able to shake it off, and with the super-healing and everything — obviously Michael had known it was _possible,_ but mostly in the way he’d known that the sun might someday explode into a supernova that wipes out the whole solar system. Possible, yeah, but not probable.

Luke’s fingers scrabble at the neck of the suit, but it’s a few tries before he finds purchase and tugs it down to his waist. Michael helps him peel the material away from Luke’s sweat-soaked skin, revealing a bare and bruising chest, but when his knuckles brush Luke’s bicep, Luke makes a wounded noise and draws further into himself.

“Fuck, sorry,” Michael breathes, because he can’t _see_ what hurts, but how is he supposed to help if he can’t touch Luke? “Maybe — maybe we should call 911, or —”

“No.” Luke looks deadly serious, almost desperate. “No hospital. They’ll know. The healing.”

“Oh,” Michael manages, and the panic claws at his insides. He pushes it down. Luke is hurt, and Michael — Michael’s the only one who can help.

It’s just Michael.

“Okay, okay,” he says, clearing his throat, steeling himself. “Your face is the biggest issue. Was it a knife?” Luke nods, eyes falling shut again. “I need to clean it, then. Fuck, Luke. You — you’re bleeding a lot.”

Luke grunts. “I _know_ that. Sorry — I —”

“Don’t,” Michael says, because if Luke really apologizes then Michael will start crying, and he needs to stay calm and collected. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

Another day, Luke might have smirked, said _do I look in a position to go anywhere?_ But this Luke barely inclines his head in acknowledgement. Michael swallows again and leaps to his feet. “Right back,” he repeats, and then steals out the door and into the bathroom.

For a moment, his mirror reflection stares out at him, and Michael can see the fear in his own eyes. He braces his hands against the sides of the sink and takes a deep breath, and then another. The churning of his gut doesn’t recede. It feels like someone is trapped in there, violently body-slamming against the constraints; Michael feels sick. His best friend is on the floor of his bedroom right now and he’s hurt so bad, and Michael has to help because he’s the only one who can, but he’s terrified. Terrified that he won’t be able to fix this, that somehow the damage will be irreparable, that Luke won’t bounce back from this. That Luke won’t recover, and it will be Michael’s fault for not being there on call, or for not being good enough to patch him up. 

Somewhere in Michael’s mind he knows that catastrophizing is getting him nowhere, and that in the end Luke will be okay, because he’s fucking Spiderman, and he _has_ to be okay, and it’s just — it’s just a cut, some bruises, the worst he’s ever been but not the worst he could be. He stares himself down in the mirror.

 _One more,_ he thinks firmly, _and then no more panicking._ He inhales, holds his breath until he can’t anymore, and then exhales.

Okay.

Luke.

Kicking into gear, Michael rifles through the medicine cabinet. He’s not totally sure how to clean or, for that matter, dress a knife wound, having never exactly _done it_ _before_ , but regular hand soap is probably fine, and warm water, and probably some kind of…gauze, or something. They have a roll of it, inexplicably; Michael grabs it and tucks it under his arm, then fastwalks to the kitchen to fill a bowl with warm water and grab a washcloth from under the sink. 

Thank God his parents are away this weekend.

When he returns to his room, Luke hasn’t moved except to press the end of the suit’s sleeve against the cut on his face. His eyes are still closed. Michael kneels next to him again.

“I have to clean the cut,” he says. “It’s probably going to hurt.”

Luke just hums, strained, and pulls his hand away from his face. The bleeding has mostly stopped; Michael wonders how much of that is Luke’s good instincts in keeping pressure on it and how much is just the healing, already at work stitching Luke up. 

“You can, um, squeeze my hand or something?” Michael offers. Luke huffs. 

“If I did that, I would break it,” he mumbles. “Just do it, Michael.”

Michael bites his lip. “Right. Okay. Sorry.”

Michael starts to carefully clean the wound. Luke clenches his jaw, but says nothing, and neither does Michael. The silence closes in on them, Michael’s senses shrinking down until it’s just him and Luke and nothing else, Luke’s shallow breathing and Michael’s racing heartbeat, Luke’s face too warm under Michael’s touch.

After he’s secured the gauze to Luke’s face, Michael leans back on his heels, and Luke swallows with difficulty and reaches up to touch it. The blood on his fingertips has dried, but it’s still _there,_ and Michael forces himself to stay calm for the millionth time.

“I think that’s the worst of it,” he says, rising at the end like a question because for all he knows, Luke’s hiding a second, much worse injury under the rest of the suit. It would be just like him to do that, but Luke only nods. There’s still blood all over his face, and Michael is still having trouble with breathing steady. “Let me clean your face off. You’ve got blood everywhere.”

Luke groans. “Fine.”

So Michael wets the washcloth again and braces his free hand as lightly as possible against the other side of Luke’s face. He begins the delicate process of scrubbing the blood off, everywhere it’s dried against Luke’s skin. Under his breath, he mutters, “What the fuck happened, Luke?”

Luke presses his lips together, which must hurt, because he whimpers and stops. “They got the drop on me,” he says, barely a breath. “Don’t say it — I know that shouldn’t be possible.” He shifts his position with obvious difficulty, flattening his spine against the bedpost and curling his arms loosely over his bare chest. Michael glances down at it, at the already grisly bruises stretching up his torso, down his stomach, and with difficulty pulls his eyes back to Luke’s face.

“Who?” he asks.

“I was chasing this guy, he’d robbed a bodega, and I was grounded — I mean, I was swinging behind him but then he headed for this park with all these trees, so I had to go on foot, but — there were more of them, four guys. Like, waiting for me.” He grimaces. “I was so focused on catching this guy, and I wasn’t expecting an ambush. They caught me off-guard, grabbed me, tied down my arms, kicked me to my knees before I could defend myself. It was like sixth grade all over again.” He cracks a mirthless smile. There’s nothing funny about it, but Michael respects him for trying. “Believe it or not, it’s really hard to break out of a rope when it’s got your arms pinned, and you’re also being beaten up.”

“Jesus,” Michael whispers, horrified.

“And then one of them did this,” Luke says tiredly, tilting his head as if to indicate the cut. “Don’t ask why they bothered beating me up if they had a knife all along.”

“Wait, did they — did they take off the mask?”

“No, no.” Luke reaches for the mask, long since discarded on the rug, and hands it to Michael. “They cut through the mask.” 

Michael stretches out the fabric, sees it unfold irregularly, and pulls at the frayed edges where the knife must have broken the thread. “Holy fuck.”

“Yeah,” Luke says weakly. “I — I think the rest of the stuff will sort itself out. My stomach hurts like hell, but — I mean, one guy punched me in the face, and then once I was already down, the knife. Some weird power play, I think.”

“How did you…get away?”

“Well,” Luke says, “I am Spiderman, you know.” Seeing the look on Michael’s face, he concedes, “I just finally broke the rope and webbed them all up. And I guess someone called the police, I think? The, uh, the thief got away.” He frowns, like he’s upset with himself for submitting to an assault, like he wishes he could go out right now and hunt down that thief. “Um, from there to getting here is a little bit of a blur. Fuck. My head really fucking hurts.”

“Okay, okay, it’s fine. Stop talking. Let me finish this.”

Luke obediently falls silent, for maybe the first time in his entire life. Michael finally gets all the worst of the blood off. He folds the washcloth up around itself and sets it aside.

“You should sleep,” he says brusquely. “Heal faster. You can take my bed.”

“I’m not taking your bed.”

“Yes you are.”

“Michael,” Luke says, too weary for a fifteen-year-old. “I’m — I’m not gonna fall asleep like this.”

Michael stares at him, heart heavy. This is too much for a tenth grader, for _both_ of them. Luke shouldn’t have to crawl through Michael’s window at eleven o’clock at night, battered and bleeding and halfway incoherent, and _fuck,_ Michael shouldn’t have to patch him up with shaking hands, improvising a solution with the shit he just happens to have around the apartment.

But this is all they can do, and each other is all they have. And Michael knows that they _will_ keep doing it, regardless of whether or not they should, of whether it’s too much. It’s in Luke’s dogged nature to follow his gut, and it’s in Michael’s nature to follow Luke.

“Okay,” Michael says quietly. “That’s fine. I’ll stay up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I need to read _Gatsby_ anyway,” Michael says over him. “I can read it to you. It’ll put you right to sleep. It’s boring as fuck.”

“I know. I read it.” Luke tips his head back. “Fuck. Your English stuff. I’m so sorry, Mikey.”

“No, it’s fine,” Michael says. It’s not fine, but that’s not Luke’s fault. “Can you, like, stand?”

Luke grimaces. “To save my life, yeah.”

“I just think you might want to take the suit off. It can’t be comfortable.”

“It isn’t.” Luke sighs, and begins the tedious process of removing the bottom half of the suit. It’s soaked in sweat and smeared with dirt, threadbare in some places; it’s going to need some serious fixing up. But that has to be a problem for Michael of the future. Michael of the present gets to his feet and heads to his dresser to pull out a loose t-shirt and clean boxers and sweatpants for Luke to change into. He holds out a hand and Luke takes it. When he’s upright, he sways.

“You’re beating yourself up over it,” Michael says, because he can see it in Luke’s face, that there’s pain originating from something other than the bruises scattered across his upper body. “Please stop.”

Luke swallows. “They knew I’d be there, Mikey. They were expecting me. They expected me to chase him down. I walked right into a fucking trap.” 

“You were ambushed,” Michael says. “That’s not your fault.”

“Because I was predictable,” Luke argues, and Michael squeezes his eyes shut.

“Stop it, Luke. Just stop. You’re — you can’t have a crisis of conscience about this. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not _your_ fault that some other fuckheads got the better of you, _one time._ It was four against one, and they planned it in advance, and the playing field was uneven, and — just, you can’t blame yourself for this. You can’t.”

Luke breathes out. It sounds like a surrender, must be one, because he could continue to argue, but he doesn’t. Instead, he murmurs, “I really am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Michael says automatically. “I mean, it’s not okay, because you’re really hurt. But — you know. I’m not mad. You just scared me.”

“I know,” Luke says mournfully, leaning his forehead against Michael’s shoulder. “Thank you for patching me up.”

“Just don’t do it again.” It’s a joke, really, but the seriousness leaks into Michael’s voice anyway. “I’m running out of gauze.”

Luke huffs. He wordlessly accepts Michael’s clothes, stepping his feet out of the rest of the suit like it’s physically painful to do so — which it is, probably — and slowly limps his way to the bathroom to put them on.

Michael retrieves his book from his bed. When Luke returns, Michael is settled with his back against the wall, a pillow by his side.

“No,” Luke says. “I should — I should go home.”

“And explain to Jack why you look like you just got your ass kicked?”

“He — he’s probably asleep.”

“You can barely walk, Luke.”

“I can swing —”

“Not on my watch, you can’t. Luke. Just stay.” Luke looks conflicted. “Please. I’ll feel so much better.”

“You won’t, actually, if you’re planning on just staying up with me. You’ll feel tired.”

That might be true, but leaving Luke to go home by himself in this state isn’t an option. Leaving Luke _alone_ like this isn’t an option. Michael would stay up for a week straight to make sure Luke was okay. But there’s no way to say that without sounding concerningly self-sacrificial, and Luke wouldn’t want to hear it. Luke is supposed to be the self-sacrificial one of the pair of them. He’s the superhero, the one who puts his own life on the line. And anyway, Michael’s not really self-sacrificial for most things.

Only Luke.

“Let me text Jack,” Luke says at last. “Can I borrow your phone? Mine’s at home.”

Michael digs his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it for Luke, as if Luke doesn’t know his password. Luke takes it and sends a text off, then returns it and eases himself slowly to the ground. Finally he slouches back into the pillow, shoulder brushing Michael’s.

Michael cracks the spine of _The Great Gatsby,_ folding it open to the page he’d left off on. “At two o’clock, Gatsby put on his bathing suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool,” he begins. 

“I’ve read this already,” Luke says. “He’s going to die in a minute.” 

Michael drops the book into his lap. “ _What?_ ”

“Oh,” Luke says. “Never mind. Go on.”

“Now you’ve spoiled it. There’s no point in reading the rest.”

“I figured you’d SparkNotes it or something!”

“Every once in a while I like to be surprised.”

“Okay, I take it back. He lives a long and happy life. Keep reading.”

Michael sighs and picks back up where he left off. Sure enough, Gatsby dies a few paragraphs later. It’s not a big deal, really. Michael was just about sick of him anyway. 

The font is big and there are only twenty pages left of the book, so Michael keeps reading aloud until he reaches the end, the final paragraphs regarding the iconic green light and the boats in the current bearing everyone ceaselessly into the past. Partway through, Luke’s weight grows heavy against Michael’s side, and Michael pretends to ignore it until he’s finished the book. Then he closes it and sets it down on the carpet. Luke’s breathing is slow, and Michael knows that despite his earlier protests, he’s fallen asleep with no difficulty, lulled by the mind-numbingness of _The Great Gatsby._ It’ll probably only last a few minutes before he’s jerking awake, either from a stab of pain or a nightmare. For now, though, Luke is sleeping.

He shifts his posture to make Luke more comfortable on his shoulder and closes his eyes. The anxiety of the imminent essay deadline had been replaced with the far greater stress of Luke’s critical condition, and now that he’s handled that situation, everything else has melted away. It’s just an essay, just one essay; either he’ll get an extension or a zero, and that’s just life. But Luke is okay. Luke is okay; breathing, sleeping, for the moment. Hurt, but ultimately going to be fine. And if it’s twisted to prioritize friends over schoolwork, then Michael will proudly call himself twisted.

He can miss one essay. He can miss a hundred. There’s no replacing Luke.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all liked that and if you didn't that doesn't really feel like my problem xx anyway i'm on tumblr [@clumsyclifford](http://clumsyclifford.tumblr.com/) where i am always happy to chat so if you wanna swing by (pun not intended but still pretty sexy) i would love to have you OKAY that's all from me for now byeeee!!!


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